Early this year, Steve Jobs talked about what powers iCloud during his WWDC keynote . It is a huge data center in Maiden, North Carolina that is 500,000 square feet and is about five times the size of the company’s existing Silicon Valley data center. Also, it costed $1 billion to build, which is twice what Google and Microsoft generally invest in their cloud data centers. Then in October, after the iCloud announcement, it was reported that Apple started to build a solar farm across the gigantic data center.

Today, OregonLive.comreports that Apple is “nearing a decision” on whether or not to build a brand new data center in Oregon. Ironically, if they do, the new data center would be located a quarter of a mile south of a Facebook server farm that opened earlier this year. Why is this ironic? Rumor has is it that Apple and Facebook have a love/hate relationship (ex: Ping lacking Facebook Connect integration).

The world’s largest tech company is nearing a decision on whether to build a large data center in Prineville, a quarter mile south of the Facebook server farm that opened earlier this year, according to two people with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans.

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Those familiar with the discussions say that Apple’s Oregon plans have been in flux while it awaited word on whether there would be adequate electricity transmission in Prineville to meet its needs.

With transmission capacity expanding and other companies now looking elsewhere, a door opened for Apple.

Apple’s project is codenamed “Maverick”, which is rumored to include a 31-megawatt data center, with plenty of land available for future expansion. In addition, the electricity required for this data center has not been disclosed but sources have estimated it in the range of 100 megawatts.

It seems to me that a lot of people are using iCloud and Apple needs more capacity to handle the data and other services. The company is also working on a small data center in Newark, California and has been building a minor additional data center in in Santa Clara, California.

Parth Dhebar is a 18 year-old entrepreneur. He is the founder of Simple Reviews, a blog focused on reviewing iPhone and iPad applications. Parth is a recognized name in the industry, known for covering Apple news. He is an editor at Techie-Buzz covering news on Apple. You can follow him on Twitter @pdparticle.